I was referring more to the comment thread, which is filled with detailed writing in support of sending blunt communication while ignoring that such behaviour ends up losing in practice. If you haven’t actually read that article and its comment thread, you really should.
Losing, in what game? Are you sure EY knows the game everyone is playing? I think he is making implicit assumptions about motivations that are incorrect.
I disagree with his strategic analysis. In some contexts I would consider it correct. Yes, I knuckle under and be what “normal people” want me to be, to avoid the costs of being myself, just as all those normal people are busy being what they think other people want them to be.
But where I can, I seek to escape that mutual cage. Internet forums are a place where escape is possible, because the normals no longer have an overwhelming majority, or might not even have a majority at all, and the cost of anyone’s disapproval online is less.
Dale Carnegie teaches you to be the person other people want you to be; I’d rather find the people who like who I want to be, and want to be who I like.
An anecdote from my dissertation adviser. He was having much the same discussion with me, telling me how professors in Asia were allowed less direct intellectual confrontation. Perhaps EY would be proud.
But the discussion went on to the joy of moving to the US, exemplified by another professor he knew, who responded to someone else in a discussion by gleefully retorting “I Disagree! I Disagree! I Disagree!” Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last! Free to be honest, free to be open, free to be who you are.
I want to sit at the table where they’re dealing that game. It seems like there are enough people of my ilk at this party for us to have a few tables. If the cool kids don’t want to sit at the nerd tables, that’s fine, and hardly anything new.
I was referring more to the comment thread, which is filled with detailed writing in support of sending blunt communication while ignoring that such behaviour ends up losing in practice. If you haven’t actually read that article and its comment thread, you really should.
I read the article, but not the thread.
Losing, in what game? Are you sure EY knows the game everyone is playing? I think he is making implicit assumptions about motivations that are incorrect.
I disagree with his strategic analysis. In some contexts I would consider it correct. Yes, I knuckle under and be what “normal people” want me to be, to avoid the costs of being myself, just as all those normal people are busy being what they think other people want them to be.
But where I can, I seek to escape that mutual cage. Internet forums are a place where escape is possible, because the normals no longer have an overwhelming majority, or might not even have a majority at all, and the cost of anyone’s disapproval online is less.
Dale Carnegie teaches you to be the person other people want you to be; I’d rather find the people who like who I want to be, and want to be who I like.
An anecdote from my dissertation adviser. He was having much the same discussion with me, telling me how professors in Asia were allowed less direct intellectual confrontation. Perhaps EY would be proud.
But the discussion went on to the joy of moving to the US, exemplified by another professor he knew, who responded to someone else in a discussion by gleefully retorting “I Disagree! I Disagree! I Disagree!” Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last! Free to be honest, free to be open, free to be who you are.
I want to sit at the table where they’re dealing that game. It seems like there are enough people of my ilk at this party for us to have a few tables. If the cool kids don’t want to sit at the nerd tables, that’s fine, and hardly anything new.